Research paper topics, free example research papers

You are welcome to search thousands of free research papers and essays. Search for your research paper topic now!

Research paper example essay prompt: Race Relations In The New World - 1483 words

NOTE: The samle research paper or essay prompt you see on this page is a free essay, available to anyone. You can use any paper as a sample on how to write research paper, essay prompts or as a source of information. We strongly discourage you to directly copy/paste any essay and turn it in for credit. If your school uses any plagiarism detecting software, you might be caught and accused of plagiarism. If you need a custom essay or research paper, written from scratch exclusively for you, please use our paid research paper writing service!

Race Relations In The New World Race Relations in
the New World The British colonies in North
America were not societies that valued or expected
equality. They conquered Native American land
without any payment for it and they used African
Americans as slaves. By the end of the 17th
century and the beginning of the 18th century, the
standard norm for the British included vicious
warfare with the Native Americans and enslavement
of the African Americans. These practices became
the standard norm as a result of carelessness and
perhaps fear of change on the part of the British.
Early British settlements in North America
established first contact between the British and
the Native Americans. Almost twenty years after
the mysterious disappearance of the colonists who
settled at Roanoke, the British settled In the
Chesapeake Bay area in the early 17th century.
They called it Jamestown in honor of their king,
James I.

Shortly after settling in Jamestown, a
group of about two hundred Native Americans
attacked the British because the British were
trying to exploit Native American labor and
wealth. The British saw nothing wrong with holding
a peaceful social state but at the same time using
Native Americans as a cheap form of labor.
Although the Native Americans had supplied the
British with food and other vital necessities,
tensions still persisted. The British and the
Native Americans interacted very often in trade
surroundings, but the failure of each group to
understand and accept the other group's culture
prevented any lasting cooperation between the two
groups. Simple misunderstandings during a trade
agreement could turn into violent confrontations
as a result of the large difference in culture and
beliefs. In March 1622, one Native American by the
name of Opechancanough planned a surprise attack
on Jamestown.

Intending to wipe out the whole
colony, his plan was only partially successful as
a result of British retaliation which killed more
Native Americans than they did British. After
retaliation by the British, the Native Americans
mounted their last major act of armed resistance.
This failed due to British awareness,
preparedness, and superiority over the Native
Americans. After peace was restored, the Native
American population in the Chesapeake Bay area was
down from eight thousand to two thousand. Later
conflict between the Native Americans and the
British occurred in 1676 when an English planter
named Nathaniel Bacon organized an unauthorized
force in Virginia to drive the Native Americans
farther west. Bacon and his followers were
frustrated that all the best tobacco land had
already been taken by the wealthy and decided to
drive the Indians west and settle on that land.
Bacon's army consisted of other angry Virginian
planters who wanted more land so they could grow
more tobacco.

When the British sent an army to
stop Bacon, he reversed his aim and instead went
after Jamestown. The sudden death of Bacon while
trying to escape an attack from the British army
put an end to one of America's first violent
protest movements. One result of this rebellion
was that it strengthened the elite group of the
wealthy planters and government officials. They
also realized that indentured servants would not
be a reliable source of labor and that they needed
enslaved people to work for them. They needed
human beings who would never have a chance at
freedom, own land, or protest the government.
Bacon's rebellion also severed British relations
with the Native Americans.

The conflict between
the British and the Native Americans broke into
open hostility and as a result, King Philip's War.
King Philip's War began around 1675 in the New
England area. The two groups had hoped trade would
ease the tensions but in the 1670's the peace came
to an end. The English continued to destroy
forests, put up fences, and create pastures for
their cattle. This threatened the livelihood of
the Native Americans, who lived by hunting game,
gathering plants for food, and growing crops. This
meant that Native Americans needed almost twenty
times the amount of land per person as the English
needed.

Minor disagreements over land disputes
between a Native American leader, Metacom (known
as King Philip to the settlers) and the people of
Plymouth began the war. These minor disputes lead
to larger ones and war inevitably broke out. The
war started out as a disaster for both sides. Each
side was losing just as many people as they were
killing and the war was turning into a war of
attrition. The English soon gained the upper hand
and the large number of English settlers began to
pay off.

The end of the war came with the death of
Metacom. Once he was dead, the English cut his
head off and sent it to Plymouth Colony where it
was displayed for decades. Aftereffects of this
war were both economic as well as political. The
region of New England did not surpass its prewar
income per person for more than 140 years.
Politically, the aftereffects in part lead to the
American Revolution due to stresses and strains
obtained by the amount of interaction between the
colonies and Britain. The relations between the
Europeans and the Africans, on the other hand,
were extremely one-sided.

Slavery came about
because the colonists needed a more controllable
source of labor. Indentured servants wouldn't work
because the owners needed a race that would have
no chance of being allowed freedom, and understood
that. Africans were used to being slaves so when
they were first brought over by slave traders,
they did not expect to ever be free. Slavery
eventually developed into a much more widespread
practice. No longer were certain slave traders
bringing slaves across the Atlantic Ocean but
slaves were now being shipped across in large
numbers.

The Europeans traded with the West Indies
and the Americas which formed a sort of triangle.
The Middle Passage was the part of the triangular
trade between Africa and the Americas where slaves
were transported to the West Indies and on to
North America in exchange for American goods such
as tobacco. Although conditions varied from colony
to colony for African Americans, conditions were
consistently brutal. The African Americans who
lived in South Carolina and Georgia labored under
particularly brutal conditions. These slaves
primarily cultivated rice and indigo because
conditions in the low country were especially good
for that. Slaves in North Carolina faced similar
conditions as the slaves in Virginia and Maryland
because it was more suited for tobacco farming.
Slaves in these colonies not only worked in the
fields but were also assigned other household
tasks.

Slaves in New England and the Middle
Colonies had more freedom in choosing their
occupations than did the slaves of the Southern
Colonies. The lives and work of African Americans,
although a minority by a large amount, reflected
the region's mixed economy and its varied ways of
life. The slaves in these colonies north of
Maryland had a considerable amount more of freedom
in choosing their occupation than the slaves of
the southern colonies did. This lead to the slaves
pushing the slave owners more and more until the
slave owners became so threatened that they began
to pass strict laws regulating the amount of
freedom that these slaves had. In the late 1600's,
several laws were passed by the colonies
controlling the activities of the African
Americans.

The African Americans were becoming too
aggressive and this worried the colonists. The
government passed strict laws that would help keep
slaves under control and keep the colonists
feeling a little safer. Harsh punishments were
performed on African Americans who did not follow
these rules and regulations as a way to enforce
the laws. Many of these laws were soon applied to
free African Americans as well as Native
Americans. The combination of such laws and the
harsh conditions led to violent revolts.

Slave
revolts emerged all throughout the colonies but
New York had the worst of these revolts. As a
result of harsh conditions, slaves began to resist
forcefully. Rebellions occurred there in 1708,
1712 and 1741. After the rebellion of 1741,
thirteen slaves were burned alive as punishment
for revolting. This also served as a warning to
other slaves not to revolt.

Slavery became a part
of the new kind of society that emerged in North
America which was built on relationships between
ordinary people as well as inequality and the
superiority of the British. These race relations
also led in part to larger wars such as the French
and Indian War and the American Revolution. The
British not only treated the Native Americans
unfairly by taking over their land and waging war
on them but they also treated African Americans
with inequality by treating them as a piece of
property rather than as human beings. The
enslavement of African Americans, and constant war
with the Native Americans became such a routine
practice that it just evolved into the standard
norm of that time period. Social Issues Essays.